Used Bluetooth Speakers and the Risk of Battery Life Cycles

While good used speakers are generally an excellent purchase, the risk with portable bluetooth speakers is that you don't know how much abuse the battery has already suffered (cycles of use, temperature swings). Also, if bluetooth speakers are working well and sound good, people tend to hang on to them, since there's not much difference with the latest models. And the prices on the new units of just-outdated models are generally so good, we'd almost always recommend those over used.

All that said, you can find some used speakers offered for cheap enough that they're worth the risk. (You can browse all used bluetooth speakers on Amazon, but we'd rather more recommend checking used offers for the specific models below at their links.) You may well end up with a speaker whose battery will last for years, and if the battery does give out, you can always keep it plugged in and use it as a dedicated bathroom or kitchen speaker, for example.

Getting the Best Deals on Bluetooth Speakers: Be Color-Agnostic

Pricing tends to fluctuate by color — sometimes widely. We include Amazon links that allow you to get an idea of pricing, and we always link to the lowest-priced color at the time of our writing, but another color of your chosen speaker might be cheaper by the time you see this. So don't take the prices that show up on this page as the last word — you may find cheaper prices for other colors once you click over to Amazon or wherever you're purchasing from.

The First-Generation UE Boom: A Rugged, Omni-Directional Speaker

<br />
&lt;h3&gt;How We Picked&lt;/h3&gt;<br />
&lt;p&gt;The old advice for choosing the best speakers (still repeated by some, like the German consumer testing organization &lt;a href="https://www.test.de/multimedia/" target="_blank"&gt;Stiftung Warentest&lt;/a&gt;) is to take your favorite music to a specialist store where you can do blind tests of every speaker on offer. No one does that, of course; it's time-consuming, quiet electronics stores that let people do this with portable speakers are quite rare, and such a trial would also tell you nothing about products' reliability, durability, battery life, etc. Also, the best prices are almost invariably online. The problem with placing your trust in any particular review, however, is that even in blind tests by experts, opinions of sound quality can vary widely — and we've found this to be true for the present research too. For example, Consumer Reports' opinions on sound quality for Bluetooth speakers tended to vary strongly with those of independent European consumer organizations, as well as tech site reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;<br />
&lt;p&gt;We've thus done a meta-analysis of the tests on a wide range of speakers by consumer testing organizations from various countries, as well as of a wide range of quality press reviews. We emphasized portability, discarding options that were too large to be regularly thrown into a travel bag or picnic basket — we were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; looking for speakers that would just sit around the house. (If you're looking for a purely home wireless system, a top contender from most commentators and testing organizations is the &lt;a href="http://amzn.to/1RSP6Uu"&gt;Sonos&lt;/a&gt;.) Also immediately jettisoned were those speakers with poor design or battery life. Other than that, we weren't too particular about features — we simply wanted to find the best sound in a small package for a good price.&lt;/p&gt;<br />
&lt;p&gt;We wound up with a handful of top options that sounded fabulous to pretty much all of the commentators. Even, loud sound — and in particular, full-but-not-distorted bass — in a small package is a great engineering challenge, and one that each of these models delivered on, though not in exactly the same way. Overall, the choice that pleased the most of the critics the most was the &lt;a href="http://amzn.to/1MwMRo8"&gt;UE Boom 2&lt;/a&gt;, and so we think it is the best option for most travelers right now too.&lt;/p&gt;<br />
&lt;h3&gt;Meta-Review of the UE Boom&lt;/h3&gt;<br />
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img class="border-black alignnone wp-image-580 size-large" src="http://selectoguru.com/wp-content/uploads/UE-Boom-side-view-1024x555.jpg" alt="UE Boom side view" width="1024" height="555" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;<br />
&lt;h4&gt;Overview of Experts' Opinions&lt;/h4&gt;<br />
&lt;p&gt;&lt;

This is the previous version of the UE Boom 2, which is our main pick for top portable bluetooth speaker. The main differences are that the original UE Boom is water resistant rather than fully waterproof, the battery doesn't last quite as long, and it can't get quite as loud. That said, it is a small, hardy, excellent-sounding speaker.

As for how it sounds, the reviews from tech sites and audiophiles were extremely enthusiastic about the original UE Boom, and many had it as their top pick at the time. The Verge called the UE Boom "essentially flawless" and the "best you can buy; (...) it's a tall, water-resistant cylindrical speaker that fires sound in every direction". CNET said that it was "one of those products that grows on you the more that you use it" and the Wirecutter previously named it the best rugged Bluetooth speaker. In its review, PCWorld cites the UE Boom's "great battery life, surprisingly full, rich, and clear sound, and a smart, modern and simple design." "The Ultimate Ears Boom has gotten a lot of press since it launched a year ago," noted Gizomodo, "and that's because it's simply fantastic."

As with the UE Boom 2, you can double the sound output by linking two UE Booms with the smartphone app. The waterproofing and overall ruggedness of the UE Boom were universally admired by reviewers, beating out all other top-sounding options. "You can dunk it with no ill effects," boasted PCWorld. "When we took it and kicked it around in the dust (just a little), the simplest solution was to just wash it off under the tap." The Wirecutter reported that the UE Boom's rubberized coating successfully protected it in a drop test (five times from table height).

JBL Charge 2+

We discourage people from getting the JBL Charge 3 because it had such mixed reviews from critics, but the JBL Charge 2+ strangely had bettersoundcompared to its successor. Almost everyone thought the UE Boom (above) sounded better than either of these though (here's our full comparison). A nice extra of the JBL Charge 2+ is that you can charge your phone off of the speaker's batter.

Used-Only Option: The Discontinued UE Mini Boom

This is a very small, fantastic speaker by the same designers as our top pick, and you can often find it for around $25 used at Amazon. New, however, the UE Mini Boom approaches the pricing for the improved UE Roll 2 (see our review here), and wouldn't be a good buy. "If you define portable as 'fits in my pocket', the UE Mini Boom is the best speaker you can buy," the Verge once reported. They meant a larger coat pocket — the speaker measures 4.4 x 2.6 x 2.4 inches (11.1 x 7.6 x 6.1 cm) and weighs 0.7 pounds(.301 kg), but it's certainly portable, cheaper than the Bose Soundlink Color, and delivers great unidirectional sound. It was once the Wirecutter's top portable Bluetooth pick, partly due to its price, and partly because its listening panel was "shocked by how good it sounded and how loud it could play", sounding nearly as good as the UE Boom. PCWorld agreed that for its size it produces "sound at astounding volumes" but said that "tiny perversions detract from the experience" including a "cluttered soundstage" when listening up close.

The battery tested at 9-10 hours1Which?, behind a paywall and 7 hours2PCWorld. As with the UE Boom 2, two UE Mini Booms can be linked via a smartphone app (iOS or Android) to create a completely wireless stereo. The UE Mini Boom has a metal and rubber exterior which is quite solid, but it is not waterproof.

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What is SelectoGuru?

We recommend the best travel stuff for those who get by with very little, and want what they do have to work well. We analyze the results of testing by all major consumer organizations and read copious press and tech site reviews. We also bring our own heavy dose of realism concerning how these products are actually used.

What do you mean by ‘best’?

The most useful, reliable stuff at the best price. We (usually) don't agree with tech sites' fawning over the most decked-out, crazy cool gadgets; we look for what works best for most people's real-life needs.

Who are you?

Our huge team currently consists of a writer and a product engineer, based out of frequently changing European cities. We released our first article in November 2014.

How do you know what’s best?

In addition to trying out the products, we review every scrap of information available on them, in many languages, before we make a recommendation. Our meta-analysis includes links to the sources we have found most useful, so you can verify them for yourself.

Why should I trust you?

We never accept payment from product manufacturers; our revenue is from affiliate networks, especially Amazon. This means we have no motivation to recommend one particular product over another (as long as they're available online, and pretty much everything is). Our goal is to recommend products that will serve you well, so that you'll come back to us as we expand this site to cover more products.

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If you like what we're doing, just use our links on the day that you're ready to buy. Your prices will be the same and we'll hopefully get a small cut from Amazon or whomever. If you hate us, skip our links; we'll get nothing and have a sad.